zinester questions

I added a new feature to my distro's website - zinester questions. Every week or so, I am going to add a survey or question on the main page. After a few days, I will close the survey and post the answers on the page. I think this could be really fun.

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I really wish I knew how I originally got involved with this chaos. All I know is I used to make little booklets when I was as young as three (my dad would write my words, and I'd decorate with stickers and scribbles) and I started making "newspapers" when I was eight or nine. I moved on to "magazines" when I was twelve. When I was fifteen, I went to this writing camp and they had us make a zine together. I guess that's when I was really introduced to zines, but I've been making them for years and years longer than that.

I'm not sure I'd even read a zine until I moved here and discovered the amazing zine library Jerianne of Zine World maintains in the public library. I picked up a few at random--Brainscan #20 stood out--and I knew I had to start making them.

As a child I was always making mini, hand illustrated newspapers, interviewing friends and family etc. I remember being told that other people, adults even, did the same thing and copied them and gave them to lots more people. As I got older I started seeing vague types of zines/fliers etc at gigs and shops. Then some similar stuff online. Eventually I came across manifesta and their zine distro - I investigated this as the idea of independent media really excited me. It was what I had been waiting for my whole life and it exploded from there...